Pioneers of France in the New World - Notes



NOTES

(1) Herrera, Hist. General, Dec. I. Lib. LX. c. 11; De Laet, Novus
Orbis, Lib. I. C. 16 Garcilaso, Just. de la Florida, Part I. Lib. I. C.
3; Gomara, Ilist. Gin. des Indes Occidentales, Lib. II. c. 10. Compare
Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis, Dec. VII. c. 7, who says that the
fountain was in Florida.

The story has an explanation sufficiently characteristic, having been
suggested, it is said, by the beauty of the native women, which none
could resist, and which kindled the fires of youth in the veins of age.

The terms of Ponce de Leon's bargain with the King are set forth in the
MS. Gapitnincion con Juan Ponce sobre Biminy. He was to have exclusive
right to the island, settle it at his own cost, and be called Adelantado
of Bimini; but the King was to build and hold forts there, send agents
to divide the Indians among the settlers, and receive first a tenth,
afterwards a fifth, of the gold.

(2) Fontanedo in Ternaux-Compans, Recueil sur la Floride, 18, 19, 42.
Compare Herrera, Dec. I. Lib. IX. c. 12. In allusion to this belief, the
name Jordan was given eight years afterwards by Ayllon to a river of
South Carolina.

(3) Hakinyt, Voyaqes, V. 838; Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, 5.

(4) Peter Martyr in Hakinyt. V. 333; De Laet, Lib. IV. c. 2.

(5) Their own exaggerated reckoning. The journey was prohably from
Tampa Bay to the Appalachicola, by a circuitous route.

(6) Narrative of Alvar Nunez Caheca de Vaca, second in command to
Narvaez, translated by Buckingham Smith. Cabeca do Vaca was one of the
four who escaped, and, after living for years among the tribes of
Mississippi, crossed the river Mississippi near Memphis, journeyed
westward by the waters of the Arkansas and Red River to New Mexico and
Chihuahua, thence to Cinaloa on the Gulf of California, and thence to
Mexico. The narrative is one of the most remarkable of the early
relations. See also Ramusin, III. 310, and Purchas, IV. 1499, where a
portion of Cabeca de Vaca is given. Also, Garcilaso, Part I. Lib. I. C.
3; Gomara, Lih. II. a. 11; De Laet, Lib. IV. c. 3; Barcia, Ensayo
Crenolegico, 19.

(7) I have followed the accounts of Biedma and the Portuguese of
Elvas, rejecting the romantic narrative of Garcilaso, in which fiction
is hopelessly mingled with truth.

(8) The spirit of this and other Spanish enterprises may be gathered
from the following passage in an address to the King, signed by Dr.
Pedro do Santander, and dated 15 July, 1557:-

"It is lawful that your Majesty, like a good shepherd, appointed by the
hand of the Eternal Father, should tend and lead out your sheep, since
the Holy Spirit has shown spreading pastures whereon are feeding lost
sheep which have been snatched away by the dragon, the Demon. These
pastures are the New World, wherein is comprised Florida, now in
possession of the Demon, and here he makes himself adored and revered.
This is the Land of Promise, possessed by idolaters, the Amorite,
Ainalekite, Moabite, Cauaauite. This is the land promised by the Eternal
Father to the faithful, since we are commanded by God in the Holy
Scriptures to take it from them, being idolaters, and, by reason of
their idolatry and sin, to put them all to the knife, leaving no living
thing save maidens and children, their cities robbed and sacked, their
walls and houses levelled to the earth."

The writer then goes into detail, proposing to occupy Florida at various
points with from one thousand to fifteen hundred colonists, found a city
to be called Philippina, also another at Tuscaloosa, to be called
Cxsarea, another at Tallahassee, and another at Tampa Bay, where he
thinks many slaves can be had. Carta del Doctor Pedro de Santander.

(9) The True and Last Discoverie of Florida, made by Captian John
Ribault, in the Yeere 1692, dedicated to a great Nobleman in Fraunce,
and translated into Englishe by one Thomas Haclcit, This is Ribaut's
journal, which seems not to exist in the original. The translation is
contained in the rare black-letter tract of Hakinyt called Divers
Voyages (London, 1582), a copy of which is in the library of Harvard
College. It has been reprinted by the Hakluyt Society. The journal first
appeared in 1563, under the title of The Whole and True Discoverie of
Terra Florida (Englished The Florishing Land). This edition is of
extreme rarity.

(10) Ribaut thinks that the Broad River of Port Royal is the Jordan
of the Spanish navigator Yasquez de Ayllon, who was here in 1520, and
gave the name of St. Helena to a neighboring cape (Garcilaso, Florida
del Inca). The adjacent district, now called St. Helena, is the Chicora
of the old Spanish maps.

(11) No trace of this fort has been found. The old fort of which the
remains may be seen a little below Beaufort is of later date.

(12) For all the latter part of the chapter, the authority is the
first of the three long letters of Rena de Laudonniere, Companion of
Ribaut and his successor in command. They are contained in the Histoire
Notable de la Floride, compiled by Basanier (Paris, 1586), and are also
to he found, quaintly "done into English," in the third volume of
Hakluyt's great collection. In the main, they are entitled to much
confidence.

(13)  Above St. John's Bluff the shore curves in a semicircle, along
which the water runs in a deep, strong current, which has half cut away
the flat knoll above mentioned, and encroached greatly on the bluff
itself. The formation of the ground, joined to the indicatons furnished
by Laudonniere and Le Moyne, leave little doubt that the fort was built
on the knoll.

(14) I La Caille, as before mentioned, was Laudonniere's sergeant.

The feudal rank of sergeant, it will be remembered, was widely different
from the modern grade so named, and was held by men of noble birth.

Le Moyne calls La Caille "Captain."

(15) Laudonniere in Hakinyt, III. 406. Brinton, Floridian Peninsula,
thinks there is truth in the story, and that Lake Weir, in Marion
County, is the Lake of Sarrope. I give these romantic tales as I find
them.

(16) This scene is the subject of Plate XII. of Le Moyne.

(17) Le Moyne drew a picture of the fight (Plate XIII.). In the
foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with a gigantic savage,
who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the plumed helmet of
his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard his head, darts
under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him with his sword.

(18) For Hawkins, see the three narratives in Hakinyt, III. 594;
Purchas, IV. 1177 ; Stow, Chron., 807; Biog. Briton., Art. Hawkins;
Anderson, History of Commerce, I. 400.

He was not knighted until after the voyage of 1564-65; hence there is an
anachronism in the text. As he was held "to have opened a new trade," he
was entitled to bear as his crest a "Moor" or negro, bound with a cord.
In Fairhairn's Crests of Great Britain and Ireland, where it is figured,
it is described, not as a negro, but as a "naked man." In Burke's Landed
Gentry, it is said that Sir John obtained it in honor of a great victory
over the Moors! His only African victories were in kidnapping raids on
negro villages. In Letters on Certain Passages in the Life of Sir John
Hawkins, the coat is engraved in detail. The "demi-Moor" has the thick
lips, the flat nose, and the wool of the unequivocal negro.

Sir John became Treasurer of the Royal Navy and Rear-Admiral, and
founded a marine hospital at Chatham.

(19) "Better a ruined kingdom, true to itself and its king, than one
left unharmed to the profit of the Devil and the heretics."--
Correspondance de Philippe II., cited by Prescott, Philip IL, Book III.
c. 2, note 36.

"A prince can do nothing more shameful, or more hurtful to himself, than
to permit his people to live according to their conscience."
The Duke of Alva, in Davila, Lib. III. p. 341.

(20) Cartas escritas al Rep per el General Pero Menendez de Aeilgs.
These are the official despatches of Menendez, of which the originals
are preserved in the archives of Seville. They are very voluminous and
minute in detail. Copies of them were ohtained by the aid of Buckiugham
Smith, Esq., to whom the writer is also indebted for various other
documents from the same source, throwing new light on the events
descrihed. Menendez calls Port Royal St. Elena, "a name afterwards
applied to the sound which still retains it." Compare Historical
Magazine, IV. 320.

(21) This was not so remarkable as it may appear. Charnock, History
of Marine Architecture gives the tonnage of the ships of the Invincible
Armada. The flag-ship of the Andalusian squadron was of fifteen hundred
and fifty tons; several were of about twelve hundred.

(22) Barcia, 69. The following passage in one of the unpublished
letters of Menendez seems to indicate that the above is exaggerated:
"Your Majesty may he assured by me, that, had I a million, more or less,
I would employ and spend the whole in this undertaking, it being so
greatly to the glory of the God our Lord, and the increase of our Holy
Catholic Faith, and the service and authority of your Majesty and thus I
have offered to our Lord whatever He shall give me in this world, [and
whatever) I shall possess, gain, or acquire shall he devoted to the
planting of the Gospel in this land, and the enlightenment of the
natives thereof, and this I do promise to your Majesty." This letter is
dated 11 Septemher, 1565.

(23) I have examined the country on the line of march of Menendez. 
In many places it retains its original features.

(24) Amid all the confusion of his geographical statements, it seems
clear that Menendez believed that Cheeapeake Bay communicated with the
St. Lawrence, and thence with Newfoundland on the one hand, and the
South Sea on the other. The notion that the St. Lawrence would give
access to China survived till the time of La Salle, or more than a
century. In the map of Gastaldi, made, according to Kohl, about 1550, a
belt of water connecting the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic is laid down.
So also in the map of Ruscelli, 1561, and that of Mactines, 1578, as
well as in that of Michael Lok, 1582. In Munster's map, 1545, the St.
Lawrence is rudely indicated, with the words, "Per hoc fretfl iter ad
Molucas."

(25) The "black drink" was, till a recent period, in use among the
Creeks. It is a strong decoctiun of the plant popularly called eassina,
or nupon tea. Major Swan, deputy agent for the Creeks in 1791, thus
describes their belief in its properties: "that it purifies them from
all sin, and leaves them in a state of perfect innocence; that it
inspires them with an invincible prowess in war; and that it is the only
solid cement of friendship, benevolence, and hospitality." Swan's
account of their mode of drinking and ejecting it corresponds perfectly
with Le Moyne's picture in De Bry. See the United States government
publication, History, Condition, and Prospects of Indian Tribes, V. 266.

(27) The earliest maps and narratives indicate a city, also called
Norembega, on the banks of the Penobseot. The pilot, Jean Alphonse, of
Saintonge, says that this fabulous city is fifteen or twenty leagues
from the sea, and that its inhabitants are of small stature and dark
complexion. As late as 1607 the fable was repeated in the Histoire
Unicerselle des Indes Occidentales.

(28) Such extempore works of defence are still used among some tribes
of the remote west. The author has twice seen them, made of trees piled
together as described by Champlain, probably by war parties of the Crow
or Snake Indians.

Champlain, usually too concise, is very minute in his description of the
march and encampment.

(29) According to Lafitan, hoth bucklers and breastplates were in
frequent use among the Iroquois. The former were very large and made of
cedar wood covered with interwoven thongs of hide. The kindred nation of
the Hurons, says Sagard (Voyage des hlurens, 126-206), carried large
shields, and wore greaves for the legs and enirasses made of twigs
interwoven with cords. His account corresponds with that of Champlain,
who gives a wood-cut of a warrior thus armed.

(30) It has been erroneously asserted that the practice of scalping
did not prevail among the Indians before the advent of Europeans. In
1535, Cartier saw five scalps at Quebec, dried and stretched on hoops.
In 1564, Laudonniere saw them among the Indians of Florida. The
Algonquins of New England and Nova Scotia were accustomed to cut off and
carry away the head, which they afterwards scalped. Those of Canada, it
seems, sometimes scalped dead bodies on the field. Thu Algonquin
practice of carrying off heads as trophies is mentioned by Lalemant,
Roger Williams, Lescarbot, and Champlain. Compare Historical Magazine,
First Series, V. 233.

(31) Traces of cannibalism may be found among most of the North
American tribes, though they are rarely very conspicuous. Sometimes the
practice arose, as in the present instance, from revenge or ferocity
sometimes it bore a religious character, as with the Miamis, among whom
there existed a secret religions fraternity of man-eaters sometimes the
heart of a brave enemy was devoured in the idea that it made the eater
brave. This last practice was common. The ferocious threat, used in
speaking of an enemy, "I will eat his heart," is by no means a mere
figure of speech. The roving hunter-tribes, in their winter wanderings,
were not infrequently impelled to cannibalism by famine.

(32) 1 The first white man to descend the rapids of St. Louis was a
youth named Louis, who, on the 10th of June, 1611, went with two Indians
to shoot herons on an island, and was drowned on the way down; the
second was a young man who in the summer before had gone with the Hurons
to their country, and who returned with them on the 18th of June; the
third was Champlain himself.

(33) Wampum was a sort of beads, of several colors, made originally
by the Indians from the inner portion of certain shells, and afterwards
by the French of porcelain and glass. It served a treble purpose,--that
of currency, decoration, and record, wrought into belts of various
devices, each having its significance, it preserved the substance of
treaties and compacts from generation to generation.